


More Like Her

by Nerissa



Category: Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, F/F, Knives, Speakeasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor sends the guys home early, because who wants to work security at the speakeasy on Christmas Eve?<br/>Selena's right, though. She's way too nice for her own good, and one of these days it's probably going to get her killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Like Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baroqueriot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroqueriot/gifts).



Everyone thinks the speakeasy belongs to George because that’s what they’re supposed to think. The papers are all in George’s name, the cheques are signed by George, and when the liquor orders come in George is the one whose face everybody sees, supervising the offload and handing over the cash. As far as anyone knows, Taylor’s just the girl who sings there.

It’s easier that way.

Selena says she’s paranoid. Makes too much out of nothing. But Taylor knows it isn’t paranoia, it’s common sense.

“Anybody comes around, they’ll be looking for George,” she points out. “George can take care of himself.”

“I can take care of myself too,” Selena retorts, like Taylor doesn’t know that by now, like Selena still has something to prove after all this time. “I can take care of _both_ of us.”

Like Taylor doesn’t know that, too.

Selena doesn’t sing there every night but she’s enough of a feature that people know her face. That’s how the trouble starts. Some guy, drunk off his ass—though not on _their_ booze, to add insult to injury—comes around one afternoon and pops off a few rounds into the windows. He catches the cleaning lady in the arm, and even though it wasn’t much more than a flesh wound Taylor feels responsible.

“How is this _your_ fault?” Selena wants to know. “I’m the one who turned him down. He's the one who's fucked in the head. In what messed-up part of your mind did this become your fault?”

“Well, would you have turned him down if it weren’t for me?” Taylor counters. Selena’s answer to that is to push her against the wall and press her mouth to Taylor’s, hungry, wanting.

“Everything I do is ‘cause of you,” she breathes, and Taylor tingles all over, heady with power and fear.

It kind of spirals out from there, when it turns out the cleaning lady is the cousin of an Irish guy with _connections_. Some of the connections come around late one night, and Taylor’s there alone. Her fault again, for sending the boys at the door home early. But it’s Christmas Eve and you can’t make people work late on Christmas Eve.

They come in the side door—she doesn’t hear them force it, they must be pretty damn good at what they do—and they catch her in the main room.

“George here?” asks the one in front. He’s not the tallest of the three, but you can tell he’s the one you want to watch.

Taylor smiles, bright and stagey, and doesn’t take her eyes off him for a moment.

“No,” she says, “he’s gone home early. It bein’ Christmas, and all.” The Southern twang is stagey too, an excess of soft sugar to offset how tall she knows she’s going to be the moment they get her on her feet. Guys get a little thrown off by how tall she is if she isn’t careful to arrange a few preconceptions beforehand.

“Yeah? You know where home is for him?”

But she can’t do that. Not to George. His is just the name on the papers, and he doesn’t deserve to get hurt for that.

“Sorry,” she says, and props her chin up on one hand, giving them a deep dimple. “Look boys. Can I get you a drink or somethin’?”

They trade glances, like maybe this could be a trap. But she doesn’t look like a kind of girl who’d lay a trap. The finger waves in her hair are soft and subtle, fuzzed over from the twists and turns and tosses she did on stage tonight. She’s got it pulled back simple, just a knot at the nape of her neck, and she already changed out of her stage clothes into a soft white blouse and a deep blue skirt that floats like angels’ wings. Selena’s coming over later, and though she says she doesn’t mind the glitz and glitter of the things Taylor wears on stage, neither of them come from places where they’re supposed to be girls who wear things like that.

Some habits die harder than the rest.

So she looks like a girl you can trust to pour you a drink, and that’s a mercy. She gives a smile, just enough to be friendly, not enough to be _too_ friendly, and splashes a generous-but-not-too-generous serving into a row of glasses.

“So,” she says, watching them tip the stuff back in open appreciation, “what do you fellas want to see George about, anyway?”

The short one in front squints at her again, and she feels it, how careful she needs to be right now. She’s worked too damn hard for all this to let it go up in smoke now. This is the only thing in her whole life that’s turned out all right, and she’s going to fight like hell to keep it. Whatever it takes.

So she doesn’t blink or scowl at him for staring, but she doesn’t smile either. The kind of girl she was brought up to be would never smile at a man who stared at her that way. Hell, the kind of girl she turned into wouldn’t either.

She keeps both hands above the bar, but she knows exactly how fast she’d have to be to reach the shotgun beneath it before he could reach for his.

“George’s security ain’t what it could be,” he says at last. “My boss, he’s concerned. His little cousin got shot up here the other day, did you know?”

Taylor is suitably shocked. Putting one hand up to frame her gasp of surprise, she keeps her other hand curled around the bottle, real friendly, like she’s ready to offer more as soon as he’s done with what he’s got.

“You mean Maire? Who works here? That’s your boss’s cousin?”

“The very same,” says the short one. He knocks back the rest of his drink, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. She doesn’t offer the bottle up; that would be too much. But she waits until he eyes it, pointedly, and then makes a face like she _wants_ to offer it, really, but of course it’s not really hers . . .

“Look,” she says, “you guys won’t tell George I’ve been talking to you, will you? I don’t want to get in any trouble with him. I got a good thing going, here.”

“You’re the singer, right?” That’s a taller one, to the back. You can tell he’s one who isn’t supposed to talk because of the look the short one gives him, so Taylor’s careful to smile at him a little less than she did the one in charge.

“That’s right,” she says. “I mean, I’m not the only one. But I’m the regular.”

“Heard of you,” he says, pleased. He seems like a guy who hasn’t heard of too much, so it’s probably a novelty.

“Well aren’t you sweet,” she says, but she includes the short one in her smile, like it might be a joke.

It almost works. Except when he looks down, still smiling, he sees the ledger she’s left open on the counter. The smile slides off his face and takes hers with it.

“If you’re just a singer,” he says, “what the hell are you doin’ toting up the books?”

The air in the room goes wobbly. Light. Like somebody sucked all the breathability right out of it. She’s moving without even fully knowing she’s doing it, every nerve she’s worn to a frazzle exploding in a ball of reflex, reaching for the gun, fast—

Not fast enough.

The short one gets there first, gets her by the throat, but he hasn’t counted on her being as tall as she is. She surges to her feet, cracking his back into the bar almost incidentally. Then the tall one has her, and he’s not smiling anymore. He forces her into the bar, the glasses shatter behind her, and it hurts.

The third one has a knife out, and he’s the one she’s watching now. The one holding her is saying something— _such a pretty face she has, real shame if we had to do anything terrible to it, don’t you think, boys?_ —but she’s just looking at the knife.

Counting.

Two minutes? Has it been three? Nearly enough time, surely, _please_ . . .

After all she’s seen since she left home, most days Taylor isn’t even sure she believes in God anymore. But some habits die harder than others, like asking for help from somebody you aren’t even sure is there.  _Please_.

Some habits die harder than others. Like helping yourself, just in case nobody else will.

The one holding her feels it first. The short one is groaning, holding his back, and the one with the knife looks ready to press the blade against her cheek, and the man whose fingers are digging into her throat, squeezing her windpipe so every breath comes short, shallow and painful, frowns.

But it’s a different frown. Like her cat gets before it sicks on the bed.

She wouldn’t even mind if he sicked on her, if that’s what it took to make him let go, but instead he shuffles back, blinking, and is it her imagination, or can she breathe a little better now?

“Jim?” the short one, clutching his back, sees the difference too. “Jim, what the hell?”

Jim shakes his head, like he needs to clear it, and yeah, the stuff’s setting in for sure. She gulps for air, quick and greedy, and it tastes real sweet.

Jim goes down like a top. One minute he’s up, still mostly hanging onto her, then he crashes to the floor. That's when the short one figures it out and makes a grab for her arm.

“What did you put in the—” but she grabs the bottle she laced, cracks his head with it, and down he goes too. That just leaves the one with the knife but he didn’t even finish his drink, so she isn’t sure he’ll go down in time.

She goes for the gun instead, but he’s already there, slamming his weight into her and forcing her against the bar so she can’t work the rifle free. He presses the point of the blade under her chin.

“My boss,” he says, “is gonna want to talk to you.”

“I . . . I don’t have much to say,” she whispers.

But in this line of work ‘talk’ is a euphemism, really. She knows it, and he knows she knows it. She hopes it will be over quick, but she knows better than to imagine it really will.

Then he stiffens against her all in a surge, gurgles, and staggers back. He turns around, slumps, then straightens up so she can see the knife sticking out of his back and Selena standing behind him.

Selena’s dressed for Christmas Eve, wrapped up snug in a red wool coat with a white Tam o’Shanter on her head, black curls spilling out from under it, looking like something you’d see on a chocolate box, not in a speakeasy. Her lips are parted, blood red, and she’s watching the guy she stabbed, waiting to see if she’s going to have to finish him off.

Selena knows how to stab a guy right. She doesn’t have to do it twice.

He crumples to the floor and that’s all three of them handled. It should be a relief but Taylor takes one look at Selena and gets a feeling the fight’s just begun.

“The _fuck_?” says Selena, and the way she looks at Taylor makes Taylor desperately want to say she’s sorry, except she’s pretty sure, somehow, that would only make Selena angrier.

“I had it handled,” she says.

“Bullshit. You’re here alone at night one week after some trigger-happy mobster’s cousin gets shot up, and you have it handled? Where the hell is your security? You can’t handle _shit_.”

Well that’s just unfair.

“I _let_ them go home early. It’s Christmas Eve.”

“No shit, it’s Christmas Eve! I _know_ it’s Christmas Eve, that’s why I’m here, because I wanted us to have a nice quiet night in, and I brought you a present and everything but now you can’t have it because I had to _stab_ a guy with it because he was trying to kill you on motherfucking Christmas Eve! I mean, what the hell, Taylor? You think I want to find you dead on Christmas Eve?”

Taylor lets her get it out of her system, because with Selena that’s really all you can do. Then she says, very meekly, “I didn’t know this would happen when I sent them home. I just wanted them to have an early night. Because of the . . .” she falters. “Holiday.”

“You’re so goddamn nice!” Selena wails, like it’s the worst character flaw she could imagine. “You can’t be nice to people and survive this business, can’t you see that yet? You try it and people will tear you the fuck apart.”

“They can try,” Taylor says, “but they never will.”

“How can you know that?” Selena asks desperately, moving forward. She tips her chin up so Taylor can see her eyes shimmering with tears. “How can you possibly know that?”

Taylor smiles, apologetic and defiant about it.

“Well . . . because I have you.”

Selena’s lips part, sort of shocked, all the anger and fear leeching right out of her in one little gasp.

“Oh,” she says. Then she reaches up, catches Taylor’s face and drags it down to hers, kissing her like she’s hungry to remind herself that hell yes, that’s why Taylor has her.

That’s why they have each other.

 

* * *

 

They tie each of the men up as snug as they can, string the ropes with bricks and wrap each parcel up in a length of burlap like a Christmas gift, nice and tight. They boost a nondescript saloon car parked two blocks over, work together to wrestle each one into the back and then drive them east to the harbour to roll them in, living and dead alike.

Taylor wants to shoot the living ones first, as a kindness, but Selena says a gunshot won’t be any kindness to _them_. Somebody might investigate. She has already retrieved Taylor’s Christmas gift (“I paid good money for this, no way we’re leaving it in his back”) so she bends over each bundle and uses the blade to finish the others off.

She catches the look on Taylor’s face, and it’s her turn to be defiant.

“What?” she says. “That’s why you have me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Taylor says, “but only part of it.”

And just like that, they both remember it’s Christmas Eve and they’d like to spend it together.

They return the car to the spot they found it because Selena says that will make them harder to trace and Taylor says you can’t steal somebody’s car on Christmas Eve (to which Selena says something rude that Taylor pretends not to hear, because after all, it’s Christmas Eve). Then, since the speakeasy is still so close, that’s where they end up.

Taylor pours them each a glass and they drink a toast, but they both have other things in mind. Neither glass is even half emptied before they move into the back room and turn most of what they’re wearing into a bed where they don’t need to wear much of anything at all.

That’s where they fall asleep too, curled into each other under a makeshift blanket of red wool coat and soft blue skirt, trading breaths because they’re still alive to breathe and that’s more than most can say after two years in this game.

Taylor presses her face into Selena’s hair and wraps herself in truth so real, it’s almost like a dream.

It’s dark outside on Christmas Eve—nearly Christmas Day—and nobody passes in the street.

On the corner is a speakeasy that was never owned by George.

Everything inside of it is hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I just want all the Prohibition AUs for these two. Thank you for the prompt!


End file.
